The Dead Lake
A haunting Russian tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War.
Yerzhan grows up in a remote part of Kazakhstan where the Soviets tests atomic weapons. As a young boy he falls in love with the neighbour’s daughter and one evening, to impress her, he dives into a forbidden lake. The radio-active water changes Yerzhan. He will never grow into a man. While the girl he loves becomes a beautiful woman.
Why Peirene chose to publish this book:
‘Like a Grimm’s Fairy tale, this story transforms an innermost fear into an outward reality. We witness a prepubescent boy’s secret terror of not growing up into a man. We also wander in a beautiful, fierce landscape unlike any other we find in Western Literature. And by the end of Yerzhan’s tale we are awe-struck by our human resilience in the face of catastrophic, man-made, follies.’
~ Meike Ziervogel, Peirene Press
Author: Ismailov Hamid
ISBN: 9781908670199
Year of publication: 2014
Translator: Bromfield Andrew
Number of pages: 91
Reading time: 1 h. 31 min.
Formats: FB2, EPUB, PDF
